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tv   [untitled]    February 3, 2012 11:18am-11:48am PST

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i think perception is reality and i am glad we shed some light on this with respect to the public utilities commission and i appreciate that you brought it up. >> it is a larger discussion and i am happy to let that the financial manager at a smaller city departments as opposed a larger one and say why is there a manager -- that seems an equitable and you can start to look at the number of human- resources people and if we have 2400 authorized positions -- what is our percentage being able to deal with that -- maybe
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we have the right amount of health and safety folks and development folks and may be others don't -- you can look at the ratios and span of control, the senior station engineers -- there are a lot of different issues when you start to analyze positions across the larger populations. i'm happy to talk about that at another time. >> thank you. are we many -- are we ready to move forward? >> just because it is such a horrible term for bureaucrats, for those two are watching -- we have bureaus supporting all of the operating units. if we have accountants doing work for hetch hetchy and wastewater -- we charge of the
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different agencies for the work and we bring it to you this way and i would not want the project to set out side -- they are all doing the work. that is a hopeful context and the current budget is about $860 million. 76 of that is related to bureau support services like financing and accounting and human- resources. less than 10% is support whether it is the e-mail system or auditing or prevention controls or government relations, it's a relatively small percentage and all of those investments add up to about $75 million and we see that on the first slide here. the cost and the changes there are relatively flat like every part of the budget we have talked about except plans debt
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service. this is just support function and costs going up to be an utilization of fringe benefit costs otherwise result in a an adopted budget cahan -- >> is not up on the screen. >> if you could put that on the screen. $76 million is the current 12-13 adopted budget. one would be some investments and i.t. securities, upgrades and the annual as asian of the health benefit costs. we are able to score some savings with employee-paid share of retirement costs occurring
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there. additional retirement costs and one time reductions for systems fund in the first year of the two years. on the people side of this, no new position and the next few years. what that means as far as business services, we provide the e-mail and financial support. the chart is there for you today and i would just like to do a call out for because the higher -- the records retention of
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scheduled [inaudible] who publish all of the quarterly financial reports as well as the award winning budget book and comprehensive financial report and three clean audits. these are the people that provide the internal service to make sure our departments can do all the good work that they do. the budget is roughly 300 people. these are the positions we keep vacant and we do not desert -- and -- that is where we usually do position substitution if they are ever needed.
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the business services team, you see the changes here. the ones i would like to highlight our the i.t. systems and investments and as you read about recently in the newspapers, there is always computer hacking at various institutions. we are doing a lot of good work to evaluate every single systems we have and you can see that as part of the audit and review report. what is proposed is investment in a chief i.t. security officer. we're not asking for more money , just investment in intrusion detection. the retirement decisions are the same one additional decision to support the water meter program
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again -- we are not proposing any new ads, just a substitution with the currently vacant position. the office of the general manager is a very flat budget and the notable item there is additional support and software and otherwise, starting at -- that is a very flat. no position changes in the general manager's budget and there are a couple of new programs and i think they will be of interest to you but i will let my colleague in external affairs tell you about that.
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>> i'm the assistant general manager for external affairs. our presentation for our bureau is different from last year when we were coming forward with the new program. our theme this year is a flat budgthis sly describes what the budget looks like for the upcoming two years. the minimal is to no increase is happening except a small increase -- [inaudible] not much to share with you -- we are not asking for any additional staff position.
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>> this is not only a question for you but other presenters -- are we having some kind of 1 pager suggesting the fact that not only are we saving money but how we are increasing the workload on current employes because we're not hiring new positions? that is an important point to make. not that we are saving money in new hires, we are creating an extra burden on current employees. is there a way to do that in terms of responsibilities pound-wide here? >> the fact that people are
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taking on more work with less positions. we have been living that as well. >> we are in negotiations right now. >> noted. this provides an organizational chart about how the journalist affairs bureau is structured. the next slide about how the legislative affairs team -- the strategic planning team, communications and community benefit program. >> the priority in external affairs -- i appreciate the general manager framed with how you think about the work of the bureau. we take that seriously as to our
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counterparts in other bureaus. the count -- the priority [inaudible] we are in conversations with lots of other enterprises to see how well we're doing as far as providing legislative support and how is that keeping things up for the different enterprises as they do their operation and the strategic plan, how the enterprises using that as a tool. the second priority is around education and engagement. there has been a lot of thinking this past year about how we bolster our capacity to provide education and engagement of the public in difference takeovers on what the puc does. we talk about as a cradle to grave approach as far as wanting to go after the next generation of white -- of ratepayers and water users to folks in the public to elected officials so when you turn on your tap, you
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understand it is hetch hetchy water and an asset we need to protect and value. as you think about the power enterprise, when you are in the airport, it is powered by the puc. there's a lot of talk around how do we ensure the public, the investments we're making to the city agencies, whether it's around the school district or department of environment it's tied to getting our message out to the type of work we're doing in the community. there will be greater attention in that area. the last part is run workforce development. jobs are a huge party out of the mayor's office and a huge priority for us. it is increased emphasis on how we leverage and amplified jobs opportunities as relates to the puc. this slide talks about the
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accomplishments for the last year in legislative affairs. most of you have been briefed on these. some of them are concrete legislation we helped co- sponsor. summit is more local, whether it's from getting the power rates adopted. there has been quite a bit of work in the legislative affairs team to encourage cross- enterprise conversation about legislative strategy. there was missed opportunities to have a joint conversation about our collective approach around legislative affairs and we spent quite a bit of time on that. our priorities for the next two years include hetch hetchy protection. if you have been reading the newspapers, you hear questions abound compliance and there is work to make sure we're able to
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respond to this questions as they come up. the sewer system improvement program -- there are things that need to get approved by you and the board of supervisors we will be working with. the issues and licensing -- a lot of pac -- a lot of activity is happening with the future of ocean beach and our infrastructure that we have been spending time with the coastal commission and other decision making bodies to do that work and we have a priority are on making movement with regard to the local ground water activities, whether it's recycled water or local groundwater in the system. communications accomplishments -- as we were putting the presentation together, i was struck by how much time we spent on crisis management whether it
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is around saving granny the tree or things that happen with pipelines exploding, we have an amazing team of 20 plus communications staff that are able to be nimble and flexible and respond to crises as they come up. the priorities of the next two years for communications include of engagement -- the engagement that happens to our communications teams. the rollout of clean power, the communication and education needs to happen in terms of rate increases, local water supply and a lot of activity around the multi-lingual access support we have been working on. the community benefits program
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-- the program to improve last year. there has been a lot of activity happening and we have not come before you as often as we would like. we have had one-on-one conversations with many of you. the accomplishments over the past year we have been able to put committee benefits requirements and to our professional services contract as it relates to the source system program so this is something we are excited about. there has been talk about replication -- you approved an ordinance several months ago that allowed us to be part of the community benefits program and support local activity -- we have a press conference tomorrow launching this initiative with the partnership between the puc, the school district, to determine of health and the california school district route are looking at legislation requires kids to have access to drinking water. the urban agriculture pilot
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program the have supported and a lot of work happening around planning in the southeast. the community benefits program priorities will be launching the contract assistance center this summer that will be based in the southeast sector of san francisco which will look to build the capacity to look at other citywide work and we will scale up the requirements program for contracting and implementing the environmental justice policy the commission adopted in 2009 we have yet to implement. we will be moving into implementation with arts in richmond workman of -- arts in richmond work and we will be providing information -- e partsnrichment
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half that is what we have been up to norplant are and i'm happy to take questions. -- that is what we have been up to and i would be happy to take questions. >> with respect to the urban agriculture pilot program, could you develop a little bit on that? >> over the past several years problem we have been asking staff to look at where are there opportunities for secondary use on puc property. working with the mayor's office after there was the opportunity to approve a resolution which you did which said let's look at sites in san francisco where we can pilot growing food community gardening onpuc property. -- gardening on puc property.
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so we will be talking about urban agriculture on the sides and we have been working with the alliance and department of public health to get a sense of how to fit in with other activities already happening in the city. >> i just want to mention there is great opportunity to work with community use and apprentices as we represent agriculture or workers. i would like to have more opportunity to discuss that as you begin to flesh it out. >> that would be great. >> one of the things we have been talking about is the benefits. not just about growing food, it's about job opportunities and the creation of a community. there is such interest everywhere for these value-added
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pieces. food is one thing but are their business opportunities? can it be an economic engine? as much of that that can be assessed during the pilot phase, that would be great so we could figure out where we should go moving forward. >> on the southeast community facility, i reached out to chairman kennedy and by understanding is we have a joint meeting coming up. how are we doing with the occupancy rate on there? -- occupancy rate down there? >> city college -- -- city college leases 89% of the building in a sublease to the human-resources as well as the renaissance, which is a non-
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profit. we have been in consistent conversation with the college about trying to get a sense of what their plans are as we think about occupancy. we have come to great closure with them over the last couple of weeks and is also have been in conversation with several nonprofits that to work force training and education activities. we are in a place right now we have not been so what we feel comfortable recommending -- we have been having continuous conversations with the commission and we have standing meetings with commissioner kennedy and commissioner brown and the executive director to keep them abreast of the plants that are happening. over the last year, with the focus on the building, we have taken over all of the custodial
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services per the budget conversation last year. we have taken that on from city college beginning in january and the feedback we're getting is the quality of cleanliness has completely increased. we are supposed to be taking on security beginning in march and we're working closely with our police focused on staff as well as with city college and with the executive director's staff to come up with a security plan that has a committee composed around jobs and other components. there is amazing improvements happening down there and we are extremely excited to be able to present to you and the full commission and to the general public what the plans are. >> are we finding city college's being -- i wasn't there -- the feedback we seem to be getting as they are not entirely
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cooperative not out of spite, but their own budget constraints. are we finding we're getting sufficient information about the class is a tent -- they intend to offer down there or are they still unable to give us that data? we asked them back in october or november of last year as they were asking for more space. knowing the state is going to have budget cuts and will with the implement -- will the implications be and get a sense of what they are putting on offer. the feedback from them is they would not be able to provide us with that information. they have yet to provide that information but we have been
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moving forward in the sense of working with the type of space they say they need. what we have been in conversation is how much space they want that you say you can program. >> with the budget cuts, they don't know how much money they have. >> de almost want to guarantee up front that the classes are filled, right -- they almost 1 to guarantee up front the classes are filled, right? >> they are saying they will put the money into the southeast facility as they have their budget conversation. those with the types of conversation that will be appropriate questions to ask.
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>> i think i'd rather stay on track with a budget discussion. >> we were originally thinking of the second meeting in february but there were scheduling difficulties. the secretary is asking if you are free and available to have a late afternoon or evening meeting on either of the two meetings in march. you could look to your calendars and get back to us that would be great. absent any other questions or public comment, we will move on to infrastructure. >> i know staffing was a question last year or at some point and now we are going to staff all of these efforts in
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external affairs. can you give us an update on where that is? >> our positions are being freed up as we speak. it's an ongoing heat in the city. when you actually want to fill the positions, you go through the process to make sure one is on board with the position and classification and so the mayor's office at questions about how these would work together and this is a large increase because they're focusing on this area and they want to make sure it's working and the wonderful connection -- the mayor is very involved in community activities and job growth activity and this is one of the places in this city that can provide that. we expect those to be released. >> that means in the next weeks we will be bringing people online? >> we heard from the mayor's
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office on friday late in the day in preparation for this conversation today that positions were getting approved. knock on wood, we would hope we would it be -- we would be able to post for the positions in the next week or so. the balloons are coming down. [laughter] we will keep you posted. >> those will be important positions to fill. public comment? >> a brief public comment -- is directly there has been tension between the bureaus and operating departments as to who works for new into supporting him. i think it is at a much better place now where the bureaus are viewed as supporting the operating departments enterprises. but in a collaborative way, one of the things to work on his
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relationship so it is not us versus them but we are all working together to provide water, power and sewer services and the extent to which people understand and appreciate the role others are doing as part of a larger collective is that ongoing work in progress. as people can in the field -- as people in the field can appreciate it happened on market street and golden gate, that is to the good. >> with that, the infrastructure discussion. >> i want to make sure you have a summary of the infrastructure department, same as you have for each of the others. it is a continuation of the theme of living within our means and having a reduction of
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some positions as well that will be reassigned in particular. the total budget for infrastructure and assistant general manager -- kelly will explain the details but you can see it's an adopted budget of $72 million and it will be slightly shrinking down to $70.5 million by the end of the year to end the budget because of reassignments or a decrease of positions which you will see on page 2 and this was part of the plan as part of the program in particular. >> good afternoon. i'm the assistant general manager for infrastructure and i have a couple of slides we wanted to update, so we're